Harrison M. Fisher Art

Young Lady in Profile (Dorothy Gibson) Graphite on paper, c. 1915 Signed lower right (see photo). The sitter for this drawing, along with a huge number of Harrison Fisher’s works, is the model, turned actress, Miss Dorothy Winifred Gibson (1889-1946). She was one of the lucky ones who survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. There is an in depth biographical sketch available on Wiki. "Dorothy Winifred Gibson (1889-1946) is arguably one of the most fascinating women of the twentieth century. Her story is more than deserving of its own film or TV show and yet, if it was to ever appear on the screen, it would be in serious danger of being criticised as ‘too unbelievable’ or ‘farfetched’. But believe me, readers, everything I am about to tell you about Dorothy Gibson is true... Early Life Dorothy Winifred Gibson (originally Dorothy Winifred Brown, before her father died when she was three years old and her mother remarried), was born in New Jersey on 17 May 1889. Between 1906 and 1911 (aged 17-22), she appeared on stage as a singer and dancer in a number of theatre and vaudeville productions, and in 1909 she began modelling for Harrison Fisher, a famous commercial artist. Dorothy soon became Fisher’s favourite muse, and her image was seen regularly on postcards, merchandising products and even on the covers of magazines like Cosmopolitan. During this time, Dorothy met and married a pharmacist named George Henry Battier Jr, but the couple soon separated and were divorced by 1913. As early as 1911, Dorothy began appearing in movies, starting out as an extra but soon taking the leading roles in a series of films by Éclair Studios. Praised for her natural acting style and comedic flair, she was a huge hit – and arguably the first actress to be promoted as a star in her own right. Surviving the sinking of the RMS Titanic On 17 March 1912, after starring in a string of movies, Dorothy and her mother, Pauline, took a trip to Europe – but after a few weeks Dorothy was called back to America by the studio to start working on a new series of films. Dorothy and her mother were in Paris when they booked their tickets on the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, and boarded at Cherbourg on 10th April. On the night the ship sank, Dorothy had ‘spent a pleasant Sunday evening playing bridge with a couple of friendly New York bankers’ (her words, in an interview with the New York Dramatic Mirror). Despite the request of a steward for them to finish, they carried on with their game and it was not until about 11:40pm that Dorothy returned to the stateroom she shared with her mother. It was at that point that she felt ‘a long drawn, sickening crunch’ and, while not exactly alarmed, she decided nonetheless to investigate. Quickly noticing that the deck was ‘lopsided’, she rushed back to her room to fetch her mother, and the pair returned to the boat deck. Dorothy and her mother escaped from the ship on the first lifeboat launched (number 7), and given how quiet it was on the boat deck at the time, she asked her bridge partners to join them. However, events took a turn for the worst when a hole was found in the bottom of the lifeboat, causing icy cold water to rush in and almost flood the boat. Luckily, though, Dorothy explained, ‘this was remedied by volunteer contributions from the lingerie of the women and the garments of men.’ It is hard for us now to imagine the terrors of that night – and the emotional damage it caused to those who survived. After the event, Dorothy told the Moving Picture World, ‘I will never forget the terrible cry that rang out from people who were thrown into the sea and others who were afraid for their loved ones.’ Unbelievably, though, Dorothy was to re-enact the experience a mere five days after it happened, when she starred in the first film about the disaster. It was a silent movie, called Saved From The Titanic, and was actually hugely successful and the first of many hit films about the sinking. In the movie, Dorothy even wore the same clothes she had been wearing when the ship sank – a white silk dress underneath a cardigan and polo coat. Shortly after the release of Saved from the Titanic Dorothy gave up acting. An affair to remember...

Medium: Gouache on Illustration Board Signature: Signed Lower Left Sight Size 22.00" x 30.00" Framed 33" x 41 1/2" Excellent condition Original use: Bookplate for Tennyson's A Dream of Fair Women A macabre and dark highly inventive large format gouache illustration painting by Harrison Fisher used as a full color book plate in the 1907 edition of "A Dream of Fair Women" by Lord Alfred Tennyson...